A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.
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Today’s gospel is both
beguiling and brutal. John preached against Herod’s marriage to Herodias for
she had previously been married to his brother Philip. To placate Herodias,
Herod locked John away but punished him no further, knowing him to be a good and holy man. Herodias was not so tolerant, however, and when
Herod offered Salome, her daughter, as much as half the kingdom to reward her dancing
before him and his guests, Herodias told Salome ask for the head of John the
Baptist from whose mouth came forth the condemnation of Herodias’s preferred
lifestyle choices. Checkmate, one might say, against John and Herod. A guard
wandered down the many dark steps to John’s dungeon, removed the offending
item, and they served it on a dish.
The drama of this gospel is
played out between four people, three of whom hardly know themselves. But let
us focus here on Herod and his self-styled wife, and leave Salome for another
time. Herod was a pleasure seeker, an epicure. But his tastes were complex and refined.
This explains why he was happy to have a religious preacher in his house where
Herod could savour his elevated thoughts and dabble – no more than dabble - with
the drama of his own salvation. It was said in a previous blog post that Herod
was a religious poser, a man who enjoyed the distinction of religiosity, even
if he neglected its demands. How very modern of him! Perhaps he thought of
himself as a normal Jew, not one of these rabid radicals who tortured
themselves with thoughts of self-reform. But for all his palaces and pleasures,
there was a gulf that loomed beneath Herod, and if we wish proof of that, we
only need consider Jesus’ appearance before Herod during His passion when, St
Luke tells us, He answered Herod nothing. There is little that can be
said to help even a well-meaning narcissist whose readiness to embrace self-knowledge – if they
are so ready – would be limited to the necessities of managing their self-promotion.
And yet, is there not a little of Herod in each of us, wishing to have our cake
and eat it, lusting for the excitement of religious engagement while leaving
our unpleasant and unacknowledged wounds gently to suppurate in the background?
How much baggage are we bringing with us on our journey of following Christ?
That is the question. There is no room for our favourite indulgence or our
preferred hostilities, or for our half-hearted accommodations. Gently, we must let God break in and steal our hearts.
Ultimately, Herod appears
not to have known what he really wanted, other than to have his cake and eat it;
to sprinkle a soupcon of religiosity on his debauchee’s divan. Herodias, on the
other hand, knew exactly what she wanted, or at least she thought she did. She
wanted the silence of the wretched Baptist. She had paid a high price to be
with her lover Herod; and here was this thunderous voice coming from the
desert, denouncing her choices, and spoiling the party. Herodias’s actions were
driven by hate, but what was it she hated exactly? The Baptist? Possibly. The damage
to her reputation? Conceivably. Or was it the thorn in her conscience, driven
in by John’s incessant admonitions? What did Herodias want if not peace in her
sins? And here she was, surrounded by the opulent possessions of one of the
richest men in the region, unable to savour the peace that pursuing her desires
was meant to bring her. We can be sure that adding murder to her ledger only brought
further burdens to her feverish mind.
And then, there is John. Today,
experts in the most fashionable kinds of pastoral theology might fail John the Baptist in his
final examination, citing his inability to accompany Herod and Herodias along
their primrose path... It is important to remember,
however, that John's actions were not simply shaped by the culture and the
time. They were driven by the gravity of the sins that Herod and Herodias were
guilty of. John preached repentance, not accommodation; John called for self-reform,
not self-fulfilment; John ignored the superficial scratches of dissatisfied desire
and went right to the gaping wound caused by rejection of God. We must not
break the bruised reed, nor stifle the smouldering flax, but neither must we
coddle chaos. We need the prudence of love, but we must not confuse its
requirements with avoiding the consequences of what we are: the friends of a
God who asks us to take up our cross and follow Him to the end. John followed
Him. John lost his head and, in doing so found his life.
Today’s gospel is a parable of the chaos of the human soul when it flees from the one thing necessary, the one thing that will bring it peace. Human indifference to this one thing is not an indication of its irrelevance, but proof of our insensibility to the wound of man’s divorce from God. And the return to God, the return to our Father’s house? John made the road straight for us in that regard. We have only to remember that we are not fit to untie the sandal of the one who brings us healing, and to decrease as He increases His kingdom within us.
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